Hey there and welcome to issue #17 of Crow’s Nest. As always, if you’re reading this thank you for opening this and taking the time to do so. This one’s a bit big, and not necessarily because it’s been 3 weeks since the last one. It might even be the biggest in terms of amount of music included. Getting the ‘Post is too long for email’ warning too so open this up in a browser if needed.
On Friday the producer and cultural critic Amazinggaijin published an article mapping the work of Dominick Fernow—best known for his work under the aliases Prurient, Vatican Shadow and Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement, and running the label Hospital Productions—and his collaborations, endorsements and support of far-right agitators and other fascists over the course of at least 15 years of his career. The article is worth your time for the background, names and context involved, at minimum.
I saw Fernow perform in Cold Cave nearly a decade ago (and Cold Cave without him since), there are probably a few Hospital Productions records I’ve spun a few times and liked, and I considered blurbing a recent release of his in a previous issue but didn’t due to space/quality considerations. Sufficient to say I definitely won’t be doing those moving forward. I’m not super interested in adjudicating the particulars of Fernow’s politics/beliefs—whether he is a Nazi or merely someone who has consistently taken time to associate himself with far-right extremists and aesthetics for going on two decades is, in my opinion, a boring and fairly meaningless question/distinction. In addition to the necessary denouncements, apologies, cut ties, blacklisting, deleted/destroyed records etc. stemming from this, I would hope that we, collectively, spend at least twice as much time championing other, better artists. Surely we can do better than someone known primarily for constantly releasing fine but forgettable music of ambiguous (at best) politics with edgy presentation to draw attention. Hopefully Crow’s Nest can be a place for that.
Alright, lecture’s over. In other news, here in Chicago at least shows are back! I’ve been to a pair of lower-capacity concerts at the Empty Bottle in the past few weeks, my first since the pandemic reared its head 16 months ago. They were both on the short side, but it feels good to be seeing live music again, man. Over the next few issues I’ll be figuring out if/how to incorporate that into Crow’s Nest, as I continue to figure out this whole ‘reentering society’ thing. A friend recommended including photos I take at shows into these issues, if you have any ideas feel free to leave a comment here or @embirdened on Twitter and I will factor that into my considerations as well.
Well, let’s get to the tunes then.
I’m not usually one for ambient music, but this whole album is quietly stunning and bewitching. This is something like a platonic ideal of ambient in my estimation and in line with Eno’s famous introductory statement for the genre. Every element feels perfectly in place here without any superfluousness. It’s ideal for quiet nighttime moments—and probably the only release that’s enhanced by the occasional drunk revelry passing below my apartment. It feels perfectly in line with how I’m feeling about my life and the state of the world, and for that I feel I’ll be cherishing it for some time to come.
I’d usually consider an album of this length to be taxing and get dull, but it’s a testament to the strength of it that I’ve found myself continuing to press play. Out on British weirdo institution Rocket Recordings, this album is a murky mix of pagan influences: I hear bits of ambient second-wave post-rock of the Sigur Rós/Godspeed You! Black Emperor variety, Pärson Sound, and pan-European krautrock like Brainticket too. It’s going to be excellent seeing where this act goes considering this is their debut.
Condensing 30 years of Berlin techno into 20 tracks would be a taxing curatorial project for even the most dedicated lifer, but it’s hard to dispute the quality of this release. I’m slightly hesitant to consider this compilation definitive on the subject, but as the companion piece to a 2019 exhibit with contributions from Wolfgang Tillmans and Sven Marquardt, among others, what would be a better one than this? The tracks cover everything from Basic Channel dub techno to the minimal takeover to contemporary highlights like Avalon Emerson and Barker. As a survey of the scene it’s surely an excellent entry point.
Earlier this past week I blurbed Garrett Gleason and Ethan Synder’s House Up There as a guest contributor for Bandcloud #350. You’ll have to click through for my thoughts on that, but it—both the issue and a subscribe to Bandcloud—are worth it. The other contributors also brought their A-game for things I’d never heard of before, I might include a few in the next issue. As I mentioned to Aidan privately, separately a little bit ago, Bandcloud was one of the things which finally inspired me to start something like Crow’s Nest, so it feels great to contribute back, so to speak. Aidan—thanks again for the opportunity!
Johnathan Myerson Katz, the journalist and writer best known for breaking the story that the cholera outbreak following the 2010 Haitian earthquake originated and was covered up by UN peacekeeping troops, wrote a pair of quick-take pieces at his Substack worth your time. The first concerns systemic failures to understand and counteract the effects of climate change as seen through the lens of the Surfside condominium collapse in Florida. The other is a primer on the current situation in Haiti following the assassination of PM Jovenel “Banana Man” Moïse.
Baffler Issue #58 released last week, and I find it incredibly strong for the half of the issue I’ve read so far. Highlights (so far) are:
-Tope Falarin on the nature of truth in America, as seen through a childhood ice cream incident
-Tarence Ray on the origins and nature of the opioid crisis in eastern Kentucky
-Marlowe Granados on the bimbo in pop culture
-Mohammad Ali on reporting on Hindu vigilantism as a Muslim in Modi’s India
Outside of the issue, the Baffler website has also been on a bit of a hot streak. We have:
-Andru Okun reviews Eric Dean Wilson’s history of air conditioning After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort, which is now in my list of books to get
-Jake Bittle also writing about climate change in light of the Champlain Towers collapse in Surfside
-Samuel Stein with some questions about the supertall buildings in NYC
A few New Yorker articles were also good in the last few issues:
-The late Anthony Veasna So on his father in “Duplex” was very touching
-Rebecca Mead on the nature of the early modern era and how Australasian birds might have arrived in Renaissance Europe
-Paige Williams on Kyle Rittenhouse was a good read. It probably won’t change your mind on the subject and I wish more focus was on the victims, but it does help contextualize the matter better
-Hannah Fry on how visual displays of data have changed how we view the world
About 2 years ago I caught producer Jesse Briata aka Lockbox at a sparsely attended Sunday show at the Empty Bottle. He wound up bashing through an hour or so of his electro-noise straight from his laptop, eventually hunching over it in that classic antisocial posture from atop a folding table rocking so strongly I feared it might collapse. He ended by saying his music was “available on the internet”, which seems the only fitting summary for that. He’s since moved to Vegas, and this release, on recent fav Primordial Void, is a lengthy grab-bag running through different styles in that same much-beloved 90s-era early internet many producers hearken to. I’m not one to fetishize such an era but this as an encapsulation of it is worth your time.
As I’ve written before Gothenberg’s Höga Nord Rekords is one of my favorite labels for its left-of-center releases on the krautrock-to-dancefloor continuum. They’re now in the triple digits for release numbers and have released this box set containing 4 hours of 12”s from their UK catalog line. Running the gamut of their signature style, the quality within is notably high. The standout EP for me is the most straightforward for the dance floor inclusion: Timothy J. Fairplay’s high-energy Mindfighter EP.
I’m not usually one for high-concept releases—the immersion and buy-in required to properly experience them is at a level I usually don’t supply to them, so they fall flat to me. That being said, there’s something to the digital version of this album, 1-minute excerpts of 112 1.8-second locked grooves by percussionist Julian Sartorius. Admittedly it is exhausting listen, and the instrumental palette Sartorius uses could have been broadened for some variety, but as anyone who has found themselves rewinding music or placing an excerpt on repeat knows, the bewitchingness of small details in such music is endlessly fascinating. It reminds me of a Twitter account that posts randomly generated double pendulums—and similarly these loops often end even as they continue to be compelling.
Here’s an unexpected teamup between rising LA producer Maral and Animal Collective’s Panda Bear. While the latter is well known for his aqueous, reverb-soaked solo productions and angelic voice, his drumming in Animal Collective remains comparatively understated and one of my favorite elements in that band. For a one-off this is a nice little gem.
This is a compilation by Arabic music magazine Ma3azef and mastering engineer Heba Kadry, raising funds for Palestinian relief. It takes its name from a recent refrain during Israel’s ongoing occupation and war against Palestine and its people—that the forced displacement, death, destruction, and other ongoing violence of all kinds is wrong and must end. Brian Eno and Nicolás Jaar’s Against All Logic alias are the most well-known contributors here.
A few issues back after Warp Records posted their back catalog to Bandcamp, I highlighted a single from Manchester artist LoneLady as an underrated gem. It had been a while since she put out more music, but lo and behold, a few months later and this album is here. I feel I’m drawn to her machine funk as it’s a refreshing change of pace from the bass-heavy four-to-the-floor found in a lot of other dance music, and this album continues in that space. I need to dive into the lyrics here more, she’s clearly not a luddite and yet her criticism of the modern age remains worth hearing off the dance floor too.
A few months ago I highlighted the first in a series of four 2-hour releases that Prolaps—the duo of Bonnie Baxter and Machine Girl—are releasing this year in time with the astronomical seasons. The second volume, Estival Growth, came out in time with the solar maximum (summer). If the first volume was appropriate for wriggling around in a muddy forest like a newly birthed insect, this one feels like being in a muggy swarm of them at their most voracious. I was watching the premiere livestream for this as the seasons changed, but had to abandon it and take cover in my basement due a tornado warning. It felt appropriate for the occasion.
Mexican producer Smurphy surprised released this album a few weeks ago, simultaneously announcing she is quitting music. Citing health issues that make working on computers inordinately painful, she is pivoting to visual art with funds from this release kickstarting her new chapter. It’s a fitting sendoff for her career. The buildup on “Please Forgive Me” remains an all-timer for me, and I look forward to seeing what comes next from her in any medium.
It took me a little while to circle back to this release but I’m glad I did. This is some hardcore experimental dance music out of Pittsburgh. The terms ‘gabber-adjacent’ and ‘syncopated as hell’ come to mind as I listen. One of the last shows I caught before the pandemic was her late-night set at the Hideout. I wound up having a lengthy, fascinating conversation with a communist art student from Houston there. I’m definitely looking forward to more nights like that in the future.
And with that, this issue is done. Thank you for reading, as always, if you’ve gotten to here. I hope you found something within you enjoyed. Below is a picture I took of Ganser at the Empty Bottle earlier this week. Here’s to more nights like this on the horizon.